Shambling Towards Perfection

The first priority is getting as much programming done as I can before Wednesday morning. After that, it’s all about getting the presentation done and brushing up on past coursework. So those are the sprint goals. So the sprint backlog items are: Priority Description Points 800 Mark subtasks on the project page. .5 790 ”Task created” page should return to the project page. .5 780 Add a link to the login page/project page (depending on whether or not the user is logged in) to the error page. .5 770 Turn the subtask radio buttons on the task/new task pages into a drop down list. 2 760 Change the dependency checkboxes on the task/new task pages into a drop down and a button to add more drop downs as needed. 2 750 Make the comment text box count down how many characters remain as the user types. 2 740 Add a javascript calendar picker for date fields. 3 730 Make the task list on the project page a sortable table. 3 720 Create slides for the presentation. 3 710 Study for the or...

This sprint went remarkably well. Being a hermit all weekend helped me to get as much done as I wanted to (and is probably the only way I could have gotten as much done as I wanted to in earlier sprints, but that really, really doesn’t work as a long-term thing unless one wishes to leave sanity behind). There was one item I started on and then realized I needed clarification from my advisor before I could complete it, but I got everything else done. I also didn’t do quite as much studying as I had intended; honestly I really, really don’t want to have to do this wretched studying, so I procrastinated. Anyway here are the items I did get done: Create outline for presentation. Gather study materials for oral exam. Fix task creation error where error message is sometimes shown though the task was created. Fix blocking tasks page. Fix task editing bug where the task creator can’t edit the title/desc. Study for the oral exam. (sort of, as discussed above) Move the task list on the...

The meeting yesterday with my professor went fine. It was quite brief, as there wasn’t much to discuss. I let him know that I had committed code to the SVN repository on Sunday, and that I had fixed all the bugs I know of and then started on UI improvements. I had a few questions on stuff I worked on during the sprint, which had all been from comments he’d made earlier, so I got clarifications on those items. He will pull my code on Wednesday and get it deployed on his server, so that’s pretty much the deadline for being done with stuff I want to actually be in the demo on Friday. On Saturday I sent my advisor an outline of the slideshow presentation I’ll have to give, and he did say that was fine. The other thing we got done during the meeting yesterday was making sure my laptop will work in the room where I’ll be presenting. One of my friends advised me to do that, and then I remembered that I’d had massive issues in that very room with my old netbook. I believe it was completely...

During this next sprint, after figuring out the basic outline of my presentation, the main thing that must get done is fixing bugs. I’m going to do a quick demo of my software during the final exam, and so stuff needs to WORK. So those are the highest priority items. Anyway, here are the sprint backlog items: Priority Description Points 700 Create outline for presentation. 2 690 Gather study materials for oral exam. 1 680 Fix task creation error where error message is sometimes shown though the task was created. 3 670 Fix blocking tasks page. 3 660 Fix task editing bug where the task creator can’t edit the title/desc. 3 650 Study for the oral exam. 3 640 Move the task list on the project page to the top, above the project info. .5 630 Make subtasks indented on the task page. .5 620 Make the subtask and dependent task lists further apart on the task page. .5 610 Put a link on the task page going back to the project page. .5 600 Make the default task priority “normal”. 1 ...

Yesterday I finished my paper and got it sent in, so I’m calling yesterday the end of the sprint. It mostly went well, although some things (like adding all 64 references, and having my paper tech-edited) took much longer than I thought they would. I also pretty much gave up on putting in a user interface section, as even though I finished the book I don’t have time to actually do much to improve the UI. There are a few things suggested by my prof that I’ll do, and that’s about it. So I’m just leaving that section as a thing to do under future work. Anyway, the backlog items that got completed were Add citations for all research done and tools used (4 hours), Reformat with proper section headings (4 hours, though this one was done by my husband/tech-editor), Add section on rewriting data-access layer if not sufficiently covered and application layer (45 minutes), Add something about UCDetector (15 minutes), Describe work-flow for typical user tasks. (Examples and Screen Shots section) ...

The meeting Monday with my advisor was short and quick. He liked the looks of the formatting (courtesy my husband, the technical writer) and said he didn’t want to take a longer look and to just send it out when I thought it was ready. I hadn’t been able to get screenshots/usage scenarios in before the meeting, so I didn’t send the paper out until last night when I got that put in. For our next and final meeting, we agreed that I’d have at least an outline of the topics for the slideshow presentation I’ll be giving as part of my final exam. The presentation plus demo of the software need to take approximately 30 minutes, uninterrupted. I’ll also work on bugs and UI improvements and start cramming reviewing for the oral exam component. That will be... interesting... as one of the topics that usually gets covered during the oral exam is from the very first class I took, in fall 2008. O_O Wish me luck, ‘cause I’m gonna need it!

Finally, on to sprint planning. I'm going to be meeting with my advisor on both remaining Mondays, so I'm going to plan these last few sprints for a week(ish) each, instead of 2 weeks. This also suits the crunched timetable. I couldn't plan last weekend as I needed to know what my advisor thought my priorities should be, and then I had a couple busy weeknights, so here this finally is. There are some development tasks that need doing before The End, but there are a whole lot of non-development tasks, too, and one of those is the most immediate concern. I need to get my paper for my project done by next week. I've gone through 2 drafts, so it's in pretty good shape. I need to add a few sections (screenshots, review, future work, that kind of thing), plus add citations and sources for all the research I've done and tools I've used. I'd also like to add a figure illustrating the security features I've added, and another showing the database schema, p...

So clearly I fell off the sprint-wagon. Things got a bit away from me at the start of the semester, and so I just haven't been doing the formal sprint stuff. I've been working on bugs and configuring Tomcat, plus getting the first draft of my paper written. But I need to get organized again in order to finish what needs finishing before I present my project May 3 (only 3 weeks away, ack!), so I'm going to restart with sprinting and all that for the little time I have left.  So for sprint 8, I did finish all but one task, Fix weird errors when project only has one user (instructor is the only student). For two other tasks, I'm not sure how long it took to finish them because I didn't write it down (the beginning of my slide into not being scrummy): Update the application to handle errors nicely and Change code to use connection pooling. I finished the rest normally: Add columns/tables to database to support task dependency/subtask relationships (1), Add co...